Selling a mortgage, pension or life insurance can be a complex business.
Unlike retail, for example, it’s often impossible to provide customers with a quick and easy online way to browse, choose and buy.
In financial services, face-to-face human interaction remains key – opportunities to explain a product in detail, discuss the options in full, and build trust with a customer still as important in the modern world as they always have been.
However, digitization is playing a transformational role in the way the sector’s myriad businesses go to market: connecting them via video with potential new clients in creative ways; simplifying online the ways in which both parties meaningfully interact; and ultimately, automating the purchasing process in ways which save time, drive efficiencies and deliver stellar service.
There’s a platform-as-a-service for that, of course.
However, as is so often the case, the cleverness of the front-end smarts depends wholly on the power of the back-end engine.
For end user organizations and system integrators alike, choosing a provider partner well can be money in the bank.
“Many banking, insurance and financial services organizations are looking at how to improve their workflows using videoconferencing and visual communications – it’s about making themselves hyper-accessible to their customers,” says Arne Bassez, Vice President of Business Management at global video communications provider Pexip, whose Pexip Engage platform is helping those businesses cash-in.
“It’s about making sure that a potential new customer can schedule a meeting with the right advisor in a matter of seconds; have the best possible meeting experience; and drive insights to make better data-driven decisions. That’s the way for those organizations to become more customer-orientated and more commercially successful.”
Needs must, too, as four trends are conspiring to force the financial services sector – banks in particular – to find ways to digitize.
Reduced footfall and the continuing demise of the traditional town centre is forcing banks to shrink their physical branch networks; increasingly sophisticated products such as investments and insurance require increased agent specialization; more and more customers crave self-service processes; and, in general, banks experience fewer new customer ‘walk-ins’.
Cue: Pexip Engage – a fully-customizable, ‘all-in-one-place’ engagement platform that is helping them respond.
To do this, you’ll need product explainers, personalised financial profiles, key associated data, customer testimonials, user-specific preferences, appointment scheduling, next-step guides, appointment reminders, and private messaging – all delivered via an impactful mix of written word, still imagery, audio and video.
Within 10 seconds of logging-on and liking what they see, users are able to book an appointment – via video or in-person – with an appropriate specialist.
Relevant information, such as quotations and contracts, can then be securely exchanged between both parties in preparation for a meeting, and user organizations’ agents can remain ongoingly engaged in ways which support a fruitful outcome.
Appointment scheduling is automatically linked to specialists’ calendars and the platform can be fully-integrated with CRM systems, avoiding any need for multiple inputting of data.
“Today’s consumers expect to be able to handle most of any discovery and/or buying process themselves,” says Bassez.
“Whether it be booking an appointment with their doctor or their hairdresser or making a purchase online, people want instant gratification. It is becoming the same with financial services. Pexip Engage enables a potential new customer to book an appointment with the right person in just a few seconds, so they get that instant satisfaction. The date of the actual meeting may be a little later, but they are satisfied because it has been arranged quickly, easily and without them having to make a phone call or send an email.
“The platform acts as a secure hub for any and all supporting information and interactions; everything in one place and all accessible and manageable from a single, intuitive and bank-branded user interface.”
One Pexip customer – a major Belgian bank – is enjoying the benefits.
Its Head of Digital Communication and Brand said: “More and more of our customers want a full customer journey on a virtual level.
“For example, we know that 80% of millennials have a hard time picking up the phone, let alone going into a banking branch. So, if you want to target that segment, an omni-channel approach with video is a great way to position yourself.
“In the case of mortgages, for example, consumers are actively looking for their best option, so you need to have specialist agent availability in your network. Consumers’ most important touch point nowadays is the banking app, so we made the Pexip Engage functionality available there too. Plugging it in was very easy.
“The data generated by the platform also gives us a strong indication of the level of commercial pressure in our network because we are able to understand how many open slots our agents have, how far along the business development journey they are, and whether we need to slow down or accelerate our campaigning. As a bank, that predictability is a very strong asset for us.”
To learn more about how Pexip Engage can help your and your customers’ businesses digitize and thrive, click here.
